Purpose

To consolidate, disseminate, and gather information concerning the 710 expansion into our San Rafael neighborhood and into our surrounding neighborhoods. If you have an item that you would like posted on this blog, please e-mail the item to Peggy Drouet at pdrouet@earthlink.net

Sunday, October 20, 2013

Business Summit: Linking jobs, homes and transit is key to LA's future

The Los Angeles Business Council has just released a new report
proposing solutions to the region's transit, jobs and affordable housing
challenges.

A home, a job, and an easy ride between the two. Los Angeles
County has struggled to provide those essentials - with housing costs
rising so high in the areas where jobs are located that many workers
have no choice but to live far away and suffer a long commute.

The Los Angeles Business Council convened
a summit at UCLA and released a comprehensive report on Friday with
the aim of addressing those challenges. The report suggests that the
expanding transit corridors in the county may offer the best hope to
develop new housing for workers. It even creates a "Livable Community
Opportunity Index" highlighting areas near transit stations with the
best potential to develop housing that middle-income earners
could afford.

The index classifies transit station areas as "hot, warm, or cool"
markets for developing livable communities. The Pico station on the
Metro Blue Line and the Long Beach Transit Mall top the index, but the
report also points to the Van Nuys Orange Line Station and land near the
Florence/La Brea station on the future Crenshaw Line as prime
opportunities for development.

LA County Station Areas with Livable Community Opportunity Index Rating

The utopian concept of "co-location" - placing jobs near housing -
has been elusive in Los Angeles, says the study's author, Dr. Paul
Habibi, Professor of Real Estate at the UCLA Anderson School of
Management and Ziman Center for Real Estate. Land is so costly
throughout LA, says Habibi, that he sees more hope in linking "housing
centers" and "job centers" through mass transit, rather than trying to
keep them close together.

"My solution is really looking at the supply side of the equation and
trying to maximize the developable land area where developers can now
place new workforce and affordable housing units in proximity to transit
centers that people can utilize to get to work," Habibi says.

The mile or so radius around the transit center needs to be a
pedestrian, bicycle, and car-sharing zone - "a mobility hub" - where as
Habibi puts it, "a person can get out of bed, take their bike to the
light rail line, they can change clothes, grab a snack or a drink and
they can be on their way."

City planners define 'workforce housing' as housing affordable to
families earning between 50 and 120 percent of the Area Median Income.
In Los Angeles County, that range is currently $41,00 a year to $99,000
a year for a family of four. Habibi says in Los Angeles
County, developers struggle to build housing for these families in
convenient areas because the land is costly and there are very few
incentive programs. The report recommends taking 20 percent of
the money that came out of the dissolved Community Redevelopment
Agencies and establishing affordable housing trust funds that can be
used for workforce housing.

"The issue here is economic competitiveness for our county," Habibi
says. "Ultimately we're seeing a lot of corporations and businesses
relocate out of our city, county, and state for places that are more
employer friendly, places where they can afford to pay their workers
less to live."

The summit included panels with business and civic leaders, including
keynote addresses from Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and Inglewood
Mayor James Butts. On the closing panel on "Investing in jobs for the
future," Bud Ovrom, the executive director of the Los Angeles Convention
Center emphasized the need for transportation systems.

"You're not going to build enough buildings to create 20,000 jobs in
South LA, but South LA is surrounded by great jobs," Ovrom says. "Yes,
it's important to talk about building new factories, but if you want
immediate relief on getting people jobs right away, I think
transportation is key to us."